Chemical Warfare by dreamtrove

Yes, and curiously, the other major investors in Water monetization are also major players in Fracking: Bechtel and Halliburton.

ETA: Not to pre-godwin my own thread, but as another example of war not sold as war:

The Holocaust is usually tracked back to the incident where a disgruntled Frenchman (jewish) responded to the deportation of his Polish parents (to Poland) by over-reacting, storming into the German immigration office with a gun and killing someone. The German police over-reacted in spades, killing 19 Jews in an incident known as "Kristallnacht."

However, this only signaled the shift in German policy, but what really escalated the conflict to genocidal slaughter?

A) The German govt. declaring war on Jews
B) Germans firing on jews in door to door warfare
C) The German govt. announcing a plan of mass extermination
D) The rounding up of 300,000 German Jews at gunpoint
E) The offer of free transportation to and housing in Israel for those who wanted it

If you guessed E, you might have seen Roberto Benigni's Vita e Bella, which has a very touching scene where families of Jews are filled with hope as they gamble on a better life (and lose.)

Not the only instance of stealth war, just the one which comes to mind. Recall the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere? Indian removal? WHO's african polio fiasco? The post-soviet blood transfusion testing program?

Death tolls from silent wars always exceed the death tolls from actual war.

Too much war results in too much chaos which creates cover for something like holocaust.

Too much peace results in too much order which is cover for something like massive Soviet and Chinese exterminations which were ten times the size of the holocaust.

Given a choice, I'd take my chance with war.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011 2:21 PM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

If the fracking weren't fracking us badly enough, this should really curl your toes...

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/01/deadly-medicine-20
1101

Quote:
Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011 4:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
If the fracking weren't fracking us badly enough, this should really curl your toes...

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/01/deadly-medicine-20
1101

Quote:
Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.

Yes, I have posted a fair amount on the topic. This is why assisted suicide is a bad idea: People are not 100% in control 100% of the time, and they are easily talked in to handing over control to an authority figure like a doctor. I just got into an argument with mine about medications. They want me to take one thing, I want another, because I actually know the field better than they do, because I've studied it for longer. Since getting into med school and not being able to afford it, I've spent a large portion of the last 15 years studying it. Sure, some doctors spent that time practicing medicine, but some of those were only writing Rx's.

This, BTW, counts into the WHO's 900,000 estimate of US medical deaths that was getting so roundly flamed when I reposted it, because being my typical disorganized self, I no longer had the link. The medication deaths were the second largest, the largest was actually anaethesia, which came to around 300,000.

The remainder were things like

3) the obvious botched operations (scary detail: The main cause of botched operation: clerical error. It is more likely that they will do the wrong operation because they're holding the wrong sheet of paper than that they will actually make a wrong incision, though this happens too. A local doctor here finally had his license revoked after killing 145 of his patients doing things like severing arteries, nerves, airways, fluid drainage tubes, etc. by just hacking people up)

4) secondary infection, this was more common than botched operation, it was pretty major but I don't remember the number.

5) Allergies, all sorts of reactions.

6) The wrong IV, this was also fairly major. A toxic IV is a killer, and hard to do anything about. You tend to trust that thing going into your blood, but who knows

7) all sorts of induced secondary conditions, particularly internal bleeding, external, hemorrhaging, even strokes, heart attacks, seizures, etc. brought on by things done by medical staff.

Also, an appalling number of errors were made by people who weren't doctors. Nurses, assistants, etc. hooking up the wrong IV to the wrong patient, PAs mixing up paperwork, pharmacists mixing up the Rx bottles, or getting doses wrong.

Also, a fairly large number of errors came from not following protocol, like a doctor not consulting a specialist before proceeding with specialty work, or even a lower medic not consulting a doctor at any point. It's fairly amazing some of the things that happen. Almost everyone knows you don't cut into a brain if you're not a brain surgeon, or a heart if you're not a heart surgeon, but people doing operations on lungs, kidneys, etc. who were not specialists in that area, and didn't even consult specialists.

This is a big part of why I ranted so much in the Kansas abortion thread, which, quirks and agendas aside, really looked to me like it was raising Kansas' health standards to that of New York... but we could use some radical raising of standards. One thing that would do it is more freedom of information...

Take the guy who butchered 145 patients. Somewhere around 123, the 124th one, if they had the information in front of them "Hi, I'm bob, I kill one in every 9 patients because I'm a fuck up. There's a whole cemetery filled with people like you because I hacked them to pieces." <- also, why is "license revoked" appropriate, as opposed to, say "go directly to jail."

Of course, there is a difference between the catastrophe that is our medical community and fracking, which is that fracking will kill everyone, and you can avoid being killed by the hospital (usually) by not going. (My grandmother avoided hospitals and doctors all her life, only to be poisoned by one... well, directly by the help, but grinding up a medication and putting it in her food, at the suggestion of the doctor, who they had called, and gotten the drugs from, which my grandmother had of course refused to take) <- another case in point, the hospital put the reaction to the medication as "the undisputed cause of death" and yet no lawsuit ensued, nor court case. We were told the same thing as when my other grandmother died (also from medical malpractice): You can't sue for wrongful death because that's based on someone's future economic generation of wealth. Your grandmother was a liability. (There's the old eugenics kicking back in.)

But back to the topic. I see a war. Only it's one sided. Someone is attacking. No one is defending. The meeting tonight to ban fracking filled the building, it was impossible to get in. It was actually just another meeting at which the topic was going to be mentioned. That summons over 50% of the population, who then listen to endless pointless debates about lawn mowing regulations.

But I feel like I'm in this sort of position: You look at the science, all of the above seems pretty clear.

But think of it this way: Suppose it *was* WWII, and you personally knew about the holocaust, and you could prove it, because you had documents in German that no one was interested in learning or was able to read. No one would believe your story, because, though it was entirely possible, it was outside of their rosy picture of the world, so they didn't want to believe it.

That's sort of the situation. Cassandra complex.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Wednesday, July 13, 2011 5:53 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

A DT a chara,

You have every right to be upset about fracking, it sounds horrible and I can't blame you for feeling so vehemently. It sounds like you feel like you know how dangerous fracking is but no one else seems to get it because they're complacent or don't want to admit it.

Did the French really use mustard gas before the Germans did? Nasty rutting stuff, that should never be done. Nor should fracking from what I've been learning.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:54 AM

Neither of the original CFC attacks were mustard gas, which gets its name from the yellow color, which is actually sulfur, as it is a sulfur-containing CFC. (Of course you probably wouldn't see the yellow until it broke down since molecules have their own spectral profile distinct from those of their component atoms, and I'd be dubious the resulting compound was yellow, making it was)

Fracking is as close to mustard gas as those others, but just more dangerous.

Some people get it, most people oppose it, but most don't get how truly dangerous we're talking. It looks to me like it would be far safer to have had an actual nuclear war with the Soviet Union than to have fracking.

The evil masterminds here, I don't think that most of them are trying to kill everyone, but rather, trying to take over the water supply. The problem is that once this quantity of this stuff is dispersed it will cycle through the ecosystem for a very long time, maybe even decades after it is produced, and certainly as long as it is being produced; and that it will be pervasive: Even if you don't drink the water, breathing the air could be enough to dissolve your brain.

Our capacity to create a trillion gallons of the stuff might be a limiting factor, but not enough of one. We seem able to meet demand. I would suggest reducing ourselves to the stone age, but this is a pretty damn simple process, and you could do it with fire, salt, and oil, so though cavemen couldn't do it because they didn't know how, post-apocalyptic cavemen still would.

I'm trying to indicate how bad this is by saying "Yes, I'd accept reducing us to the stone age as a fair alternative, if it was the only one" but rejecting it mainly on the grounds of "it wouldn't help" but also of course, would be difficult to pull off. Any remaining technological civilization would still go on poisoning the cavemen.

You could introduce a reducing agent, but even if you could find something that would work, and then make a trillion gallons of it, and find a way to distribute it into the ecosystem, AND it would also follow the same pattern of dispersal and cycling, statistics tells us that it would still be randomly hit or miss, and you'd be lucky to get 1/2 of it.

I think actively promoting an economic collapse would be a good idea if we were sure it would help, and if we knew how to do it. I suspect that Obama is doing that on his own, though I think he's an avid supporter of fracking, since he did everything necessary to make this industry flourish.

Sadly, as Obama games for the position of "worst president ever" (which he wins if we all die) the republican response is not to pick up the ball but to say "Obama isn't fracking fast enough!" which is just more briar patch stuff to make us think that the govt. is actual "doing something about the problem" rather than actively creating it.

Equally disturbing, the naysayers will only agree that we are right after everyone is already sick and dying, which is useless.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Thursday, July 14, 2011 8:12 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by RionaEire:
Did the French really use mustard gas before the Germans did? Nasty rutting stuff, that should never be done.

Not so much mustard, but the French were the first to start throwing chems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_gas_in_World_War_I
We rolled out our own nasty, which wasn't in service till after that war, and went on denying it till the 60's, mostly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewisite

And contrary to the lies and excuses of our military, in violation of many treaties and agreements, we STILL maintain and operate at least five bio-warfare labs which I know of, Detrick and Aberdeen being the most well known.

And folks think a reactor accident is bad - just imagine Captain Trips sittin on a shelf somewhere in one of those places during a natural disaster.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Thursday, July 14, 2011 8:59 AM

Frem

Kittycat had an accident in the hall, but it wasn't that accidental. Just on the chance that you have trouble reading green

I thought I'd ask, 'cause I actually want your opinion on the whole picture,

It doesn't take an accident for this to turn worse than nuclear. A lot of water treatment is doing stuff like diluting it 10:1 or vaporizing it, neither of which is going to do a damned thing to one million gallons of haloalkanes and associated CFCs per square mile.

The short story:

Each well frack is 60,000 gallons of toxic cocktail aka corexit and the like, mixed to 2% solution, so that means 3 million gallons of water to be taken, and then put back. Even if you dilute it 10:1 you're there with 2,000 ppm chemical weapons in the water. That's enough to kill anyone.

Second, as I said above, you don't have to drink the water, inhaling the vapors will kill you, as happened to a friend of mine, who, mind you, was wearing a hazmat suit at the time, but his employer (the US army) did not think that vapors would be an issue, so the haloalkanes ate his innards.

Third, each frack well distributes its "water" intentionally up to 500 miles in any direction. This is supposed to minimize ecological damage, but actually maximized it instead. I'm guessing 99/100 people in the biz know this, and 1/100 politicians and media people do, which is why they say it.

Fourth, given the above numbers, its overkill by a huge margin to exterminate the entire population. Figure that if they get just 3% of their permits, then that will be enough to kill everyone in the country 1000 times over. They're clearly counting on some localized resistance, which is why they created the toxic sludge redistribution program. (aka spreading the "wealth" around

)

...

So, Cat, I does the science part of it, (and Byte) and come up with all this stuff I post in this thread. Dog look at the situation and sayz "this ain't an energy industry, it loses energy, it aint a money scheme coz it loses money, but it sher kill a lot of folk so it looks like war."

Which is where I come around and ask you, because if I'm right, this is war, then it's also not my area of expertise.

And yes, I got your memos on the subject, all taken into account and considered carefully. Tactically, we can take down some of them, but not all. We need a better strategy.

But first, what I'm looking for is an overall picture, just taking up the possibility that DT is right, and it's war, then what are we looking at?

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:00 PM

You keep askin questions I ain't willin to give public answers to, though.

-F

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Thursday, July 14, 2011 4:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

You keep askin questions I ain't willin to give public answers to, though.

-F

Yeah, I just wanted to make sure you had actually read the whole thread. ;)

It ain't a war if no one fights back

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 9:49 AM

Had a nice little nudge on a rapacious, rethuglican greed-follower which handily wrecked his support of the idea quite recently, regarding the notion of fracking Collingwood, since all else aside, the supposed resources they wanna get at are too damn deep for any viable profitability - only reason they're even playing that is to get subsidy money through DTE/Michcon, and given recent events and behavior having much of the population wanting to all but lynch them, they have little public support of anything right now.

So the conversation went a bit like this.
"This is bullshit, there's no money in this, and you'll have the whole horde of greens up your ass without gettin anything for it"
"Well, who cares, they won't support me anyway, damn lever-pullers."
"You don't rile em up though, they just stay home and talk shit - not to mention if you get involved in a debacle like this you know the leadership will throw you under the bus, this shit has Ponzi written all over it, and the fickle public is sharpening their pitchforks."
"I can maybe swing it on jobs, I think."
"NO MONEY IN IT, eight THOUSAND feet, digging after dinosaur farts ?"
"Hmmmm..."

Exploit the greed man, exploit the greed.

DTE/MichCon is very, very unpopular right now, folks haven't forgotten the fires, and recently a lot of people went without power in severe heat for a long time while DTE sat on their ass, and offered all of $25.00USD in credit to folk who's businesses were entirely ruined by lack of refrigeration and suchlike - this is in part cause when the infrastructure needs maintanence they claim it's public property, but when it makes money they claim it belongs to them, so we have a rotted-out system that fails at the slightest breath of wind, cause they pocket most of the money funneled into fixing it.
And ask someone who's had to suffer 100 degree heat for eight days with a fridge full of ruined groceries how *THEY* feel about DTE's brilliant ideas OTHER THAN fixing the damn power infrastructure right now...

Put to them the notion that DTE is chasing phantoms in the name of greed, while they suffer...
And they're yours, completely.

Political squeeze play, you get em at one end by pointing out the lack of profit and potential backlash - and at the other by pointing out the failing infrastructure and environmental damage.
Do it right, and you get all three factions, the greedmongering Rethugs, Liberal Dems, and the freakin Greens in an unholy alliance against a thing that benefits none of them, for completely different reasons.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnemyMine
Of course, it helps having Frenemy-type relations with our worse political elements cause most of the flak they catch from me isn't over them doing evil, it's over how BADLY they fumble doing it!

To do evil, that's bad.
To do evil BADLY, that's unforgivable.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 12:33 PM

You got a very good bead on this one (knew you would, the source of my nudging)

Another important money angle to add: They exaggerate the yield of these wells so they can flip them as part of a derivatives scheme.

Just adding a few more ideas that come to mind:

1) It's important to bear in mind that when they inflate the nat'l gas which is exactly what you say it is, nice term btw, serves to push the price down, causing people to build new generators, so there are power players who want us off oil and onto gas who are pushing it

2) poisoning the water seems unnecessary to the process, so it's being run by a separate agenda, as Byte suggested

3) There's a fourth group of pitchforkers I want to stir up, just soes I got a complete set: Turn this water issue into a property rights issue and turn the tea party on them.

If everyone has a different reason to hate the frackers, we frack the whole debate, so it's important to interject solutions for various sides to propose that don't actually result in fracking.

There are a lot of visuals that haven't been used yet.

Supermodel goes down to the beach, but instead of a bikini, she's wearing a hazmat suit

Just imagine for a moment what a fart-based energy economy is going to smell like. I mean, this is not just ripping one that knocks the roof off the donut house, it's literally like every person in America cutting one every eight seconds.

When all fuel is pressurize 6000 times in the fuel tank of every car, truck, boat, plane and power plant, just imagine the crashes we can have.

I'm sorry, I have tragic news. Your aunt was just killed by a giant flaming fart bomb. In other new, it destroyed Cleveland.

One of my favorite lines so far came from a gas company exec *defending* the idea: No, there hasn't been a leak. Trust me, if there had been, you'd know. Once we add the chemicals and frack, this stuff is so noxious that you'd smell it quarter mile away.

Oh, that's nice to know.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 12:48 PM

Quote:
2) poisoning the water seems unnecessary to the process, so it's being run by a separate agenda, as Byte suggested

Not so much a SEPARATE agenda, as just an intermeshed one.

If fossil fuels are running out and/or our dependence on them is going to be cut down by alternative energy sources (long time coming, but it *IS* beginning to make headway), then WHAT ELSE can you monetize using the same kinds of drilling equipment and refining platforms?

Water?

If you damage enough of the fresh water and make in unpotable, then you've driven up prices to a point where it becomes worth your while to go into the water-drilling and water-selling business.

Just a thought.

Poisoning the water SEEMS unnecessary, and SEEMS like a bad idea - unless you're banking on people REALLY wanting and needing water in the near term, which inflates your prices for clean water to staggering levels.

Remember, Walgreen's Pharmacies really took off during Prohibition, which they supported. Why? They supported Prohibition because under the law you could only sell alcohol for religious reasons or under prescription (for such ailments as "debility" and the like) - and they were one of the few who were licensed to fill those prescriptions. So while selling far less alcohol, places that sold it legally were also selling it for far MORE money, making cash hand over fist in the process.

Boone Pickens is buying wind rights, but he's also buying water and mineral rights ALL THE WAY DOWN from where he puts his windmills. But I'm sure he's only doing that with the purest of intentions...

Frem, DT, Byte: This is one of those... well, not RARE, really, but none to common these days, either... moments and issues when we find ourselves remarkably in nearly 100% agreement. Just thought that was worth mentioning.

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 12:51 PM

Quote:
Just imagine for a moment what a fart-based energy economy is going to smell like. I mean, this is not just ripping one that knocks the roof off the donut house, it's literally like every person in America cutting one every eight seconds.

Welcome to Texas. Go about 70 miles southeast of Austin, to Luling, to get a very clear idea of what that smells like. 15 miles southwest of San Angelo lies Wall, Texas, which still has a few pumping wells, and that smell has hung over that town for as long as I can remember. Locals joke about it: "Smells like money!"

Who knew money had such a foul and permeating stench?

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 12:58 PM

Other visual to use in an anti-fracking commercial: Son coming home to visit, he's clearly a returning GI. Camera follows him inside to the big welcome, interrupted by BIG noises, house shaking, son panicking. "Is it an earthquake, Ma?! An enemy attack?!" Ma just looks normal, cool as a cucumber. "No, dear - they're just fracking again. It's like this every day now."

Camera pulls out of the picture window to show the house's cracked and broken foundation and the broken ground with smoke and fumes seeping out while plants wilt and pets fall over...

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 1:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
1) It's important to bear in mind that when they inflate the nat'l gas which is exactly what you say it is, nice term btw, serves to push the price down, causing people to build new generators, so there are power players who want us off oil and onto gas who are pushing it

Oh, you mean like THIS, for example ?
http://detnews.com/article/20110715/AUTO01/107150359/1016/MichCon-work
s-to-expand-natural-gas-vehicle-fueling-options

It's all about jumping on the profit/speculation bandwagon, rolling federal dosh into profit a'la ponzi while plotting to stick taypayers with the bill, and the damages, when the true "price" comes due.

Thing is, and I wanted to add this afterthought - one of the mistakes you keep making is assuming you're dealing with human beings, this is a mistake.

You're dealing with politicians, which go so many steps *beyond* sociopathy that from a human viewpoint they might as well be Starfish Aliens.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StarfishAliens

If you want a politician to stop doing something, stop supporting something, you don't like, all you really have to do is convince them they will be unable to shift the blame for it unto someone else - at which point the notion of *gasp* taking responsibility, of CONSEQUENCES, however minor, seeps into their little brain and they run howling for the hills.

One of the meanest, cruelest things you can DO to folk is tell them the truth, and thus when you point out not only that the factions behind this are planning to throw them under the bus, but factually detail exactly how they plan to do it, despite the automatic assumption that you're lying their native paranoia kicks in and the moment they see confirmation of this in any way, they're be gone like a feather in a hurricane, claiming all the while they NEVER supported that, ever, nu-uh, no way, to which you more or less blackmail them into making a couple "token" concessions, rebukes, or suchlike - which to their shortsighted, self-involved, dumb-as-post asses look like exactly what they are, just token things....

When in FACT they are pieces of an interlocking puzzle along with "token" acts you've also extracted from OTHER politicians, which combined into a whole cloth, is a death shroud for the idea you wanted killed.

Oh, and Mikey - I wouldn't be too sure of that, there's a lot of NIMBY-style Shadenfreude involved in this, and you know damn well that *some* folk, especially by their recent conduct, would out-and-out cheer fracking pollution of "certain neighborhoods", where of course "those people" live, yadda yadda.
Conversely, there's regions and neighborhoods I will not defend either, in direct response to that, since I figure they DESERVE to choke on the natural consequences of shit they cheered on and endorsed, only so long as the damage hits someone ELSE.
You see - not only do I think folks like that better dead, it's ALSO a matter of sticking true to both my own, AND their own, principles - not saving them from themselves, not acting against their wishes "for their own good" and allowing them to experience the personal responsibility and consequences for their own actions.

At which point they'll whine and scream and blame and once again show themselves for the complete hypocrites they are, while I pocket the bribes and concessions from deliberate failure to interfere, even though I wasn't going to anyway.
For ME, that's win-win.

Honestly, Mikey, did you think I'd pass up a chance to slam the boot in for solidarity ?
With folk who backstab and betray their *own* causes out of cowardice and short sighted self-interest so often they're more dangerous to you as allies than enemies ?
Do you really think THEY are not in this to protect only themselves by shoving the damage onto "lesser" folk who don't share their fucked up sensibilities ?

Again, are you sure you wish to pursue yet another COMPLETELY FAILED STRATEGY ?
Don't you have enough of their knives in your back from every time you ever tried to work together or negotiate with them ?

Frack em, let those goddamn Tea Party asshats get fracked, let them experience the DIRECT RESULT of shit them and their ilk enabled, and then when their insane, desperate lunacy results in violence that completely discredits them while doing damage to, AND exposing the frackers for what they are as well....

And meanwhile I'll riverdance with a fucking fiddle to the flames.
Call it *MY* two-fer-one special.

-Frem
ETA: That's not to mean you Mikey, or Byte, especially when we mostly agree in principle anyway, or even DT who I think is batshit and will happily steamroller on various other issues...
I mean the koolaid chugging enablers who rant and scream when the fallout from their own stupidity lands on THEM, just to be clear.

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 2:21 PM

Mike,

impressive. You have a good bead on the water, at least the money part of it. I think there's a power agenda here, because it's difficult for a group to revolt if you can cut off their water supply. More difficult than if you can cut off their food and medical supplies.

On T Boone Pickens, he also has pulled a curious trick: His "windmill landuse contracts" that he gets greens to sign have a loophole in the fineprint legalese that allows him to convert them to fracking rights.

He's an evil SOB.

Quote:

Who knew money had such a foul and permeating stench?

The military industrial complex?

How much chemical horizontal fracking is going on down there? I here texas is being rapidly polluted and depleted of water.

As to returning soldiers, there are posters here that say "Drill a gas well, bring a soldier home" and my mom wants to append a sign to bottom that says "and hand him a glass of water."

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 3:29 PM

Fart powered cars. I forgot that the gas stations (gives them a whole new meaning) could also explode.

Quote:

It's all about jumping on the profit/speculation bandwagon, rolling federal dosh into profit a'la ponzi while plotting to stick taypayers with the bill, and the damages, when the true "price" comes due.

On some level… but the chemical stuff actually costs a fortune, and serves no economic purpose other than the one Mikey mentioned.

Quote:

Thing is, and I wanted to add this afterthought - one of the mistakes you keep making is assuming you're dealing with human beings, this is a mistake.

Listening…

Quote:
Starfish Aliens

"I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage."

You and I have different views of humanity. I think that under the kindness of the bulk of humanity lies a pure evolutionary angle which is as merciless as any predator. Deep down in the unconscious mind, part of what makes the bad boy attractive is what women probably aren't actually thinking: "His kids will beat Mr. Nice Guy's kids into a bloody pulp." But that's evolution for you.

I think these guys are human, but they're a mutation on human, the rogue genetic glitch, like the plague that is so virulent it wipes out its host and then becomes extinct. This is some fluke human parasite that thinks that forwarding its own genes to the exclusion of all others is a sound evolutionary idea, not realizing many things about the gene pool, and how genes bounce back at you, genetic drift, inbreeding and so many other factors that really make it a bad idea, and that I think the inclination is an instinctive glitch, so it's possible they couldn't be reasoned out of it. Of course, such parasite rely on well meaning true-believers who think it is in the public interest to fulfill the agenda. Want to monetize water? Create a devastating draught caused by the over-use of free water. Then the do-gooders will support you. etc. Of course this is the sort they fill their think tanks and advisory panels with. The politicians themselves are just monkeys on strings dancing to organ grinders. Advisors, they play the organ grinders, but behind them are the ones who wrote the rolls on which the music is written, and therein lie your true psychopathic parasites.

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If you want a politician to stop doing something, stop supporting something, you don't like, all you really have to do is convince them they will be unable to shift the blame for it unto someone else - at which point the notion of *gasp* taking responsibility, of CONSEQUENCES, however minor, seeps into their little brain and they run howling for the hills.

I've been gnawing on this one actually. Our local cretin is a mafiosa named Cuomo, just like his dad. To them, the family name means a lot. I think that using this fracking, we could probably make it mean fart. Or worse. I just ripped a cuomo. But seriously, doing things like having people refer to contaminated areas as "Cuomozones" or something might give him pause. I think there's a Patrón hiding back there would be ticked if Andrew made the family name into mud.

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One of the meanest, cruelest things you can DO to folk is tell them the truth, and thus when you point out not only that the factions behind this are planning to throw them under the bus, but factually detail exactly how they plan to do it, despite the automatic assumption that you're lying their native paranoia kicks in and the moment they see confirmation of this in any way, they're be gone like a feather in a hurricane, claiming all the while they NEVER supported that, ever, nu-uh, no way, to which you more or less blackmail them into making a couple "token" concessions, rebukes, or suchlike - which to their shortsighted, self-involved, dumb-as-post asses look like exactly what they are, just token things….

Those tracking Cuomo in particular knew he was always profracking, because he went to great lengths to avoid mentioning subject while trying to be elected on the issue. I'm 99% certain that Paladino was a shill candidate working for Cuomo. This is almost SOP in NY: Pour all the resources into the primary campaign and then deliberately throw the general election.

Still, Cuomo does have a corner to back down to if you let him, which is he can claim that he was making a concession to republicans. (most republicans don't want fracking either, but this is plausible denial for a pro-fracking democrat)

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When in FACT they are pieces of an interlocking puzzle along with "token" acts you've also extracted from OTHER politicians, which combined into a whole cloth, is a death shroud for the idea you wanted killed.

Okay, there are pieces of this that I'm not getting. I don't know how to expose to someone like Cuomo that the men behind the curtain are going to sell him down the river for a terrible mixed metaphor. I should stick to the monkey-organ grinder. I don't really know how to access him.

Also, it sounds like you're talking about pulling down token favors from others that will make the pro-fracker you're targeting not look like he is "going with the flow" but more like he's "the lone asshole standing in the way of progress" in this case, the environment. (ad image along the lines of "we'd be all set on the clean air here if it weren't for sir fartsalot."

Am I close?

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NIMBY-style Shadenfreude

We actually have a NIMBY coalition here. They mean it. They say "You're damn right it's NIMBY!" If there were one everywhere, it might work ;)

What people don't get is that fracking pollution cannot be contained, because it will cycle through the environment. Even if you can ban fracking, other frackers can spill into your water, and even if you can ban that, they can vaporize it and it will rain down on you, and even if you ban that, their fracking pollution will evaporate anyway and rain down on you.

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where of course "those people" live, yadda yadda.

Actually, the world has changed. We have become "those people." I think that was the point about west virginia. Rural, it's the new black. We're a lot poorer than black out here, and the new agenda is definitely pro-city and anti-rural, so, while, sure, there is anti-black still running, it's a secondary target. They're not looking to frack the blacks. It's hillbillies, and when you read what the governor wrote here, that it must be kept away from cities because it is harmful to humans, and then he just gave a green light to open season on fracking the hills, you gotta figure he just said "hillbillies aren't human."

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Conversely, there's regions and neighborhoods I will not defend either

The environmentalist in me has to disagree for three reasons:
1) There's other things in those places besides your enemies
2) Becoming your enemies is not the goal here
3) The Environment is a living breathing thing, and what you put down one place ain't staying there, particularly in this case

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while I pocket the bribes and concessions from deliberate failure to interfere, even though I wasn't going to anyway. For ME, that's win-win.

You give me an idea: Being a potential ally that they are forced to negotiate with might actually be a good tactic, because it might enable a lot of stalling for time, and some building of the power base.

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Again, are you sure you wish to pursue yet another COMPLETELY FAILED STRATEGY ?

I know you're responding to Mike, just curious what the strategy you're referring to is. Environmentalists have volumes of failed strategies that we try regularly to see if they will fail a 153rd time.

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Frack em, let those goddamn Tea Party asshats get fracked

Hey!

Also, the thing that all the haters are missing on the Tea Party is that anyone can stand up and claim to be the Tea Party. That's what Herman Cain is doing as their baby right now, being so damned ironically a former Fed Chair heading the movement started to End the Fed.

Don't ally yourself to people who have already stood up and called themselves the tea party, call yourself the tea party. That was my point all along on the thing.

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AND exposing the frackers for what they are as well….

Okay, I can see using this fracking thing to gain extra leverage against TPTB, but I have to say something pre-emptively before we go there, because this is a problem we already have here:

[rant]
We're being EXTREMELY careful over here not to turn in into a partisan issue, because conservative that I am, I'm still a democrat, and my group is bipartisan, but a lot of my fellow democrats want to go and load partisan issues on to this, and if they do that, then it becomes a partisan issue. As a non-partisan or bi-partisan issue, our support looks like 99% or better. As a partisan issue, rural counties are all red.

That's what the map looks like when you check out what party has a majority of registrations in each county. First thing you notice is that all the rural areas are red, except new england. Next, you notice the rest of us are all sitting on shale, but not in cities, because a square mile of city is just worth to much money to frack.

Next thing you might notice is that this is true even in Michigan. If this becomes a partisan issue, it is already a local issue, because the feds seem to be solidly behind it. Obama has said "We'll follow what the EPA says" but then his head of the EPA is an oil and gas lackey, and almost all the staff are oil and gas lobbyists. I already strongly suspect what they will say.

What I'm saying is "We can't let the frackers carry the GOP vote, or they automatically win."

That said, we also have a lot of power-dems in NY and PA and likely everywhere that are pro-frackers.

Also, and most importantly: This is an issue capable of blowing a giant hole in the side of TPTB. Its value for that should not be overlooked, but it certainly is not going to be that if we get side-tracked on partisan vendettas.[/rant]

ETA: Oh, on a personal note, gee, thanks. However, my opinion of you is not based on your opinion of me. I still hold you in high regard, even if I think you are very wrong about some things.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 4:40 PM

BYTEMITE

Texas already was in a major groundwater crisis before this, the major aquifer they use (which also lies under Kansas and some of the other ag states upgradient) is damn near depleted. Add in a a serious drought, and you've got water problems I've heard about even in UTAH.

Utah is also getting a bit of this to my east, they're fracking for oil shale, which is pretty similar in terms of actual production output, in noxious smell, in use of fracking fluid, and in "Holy whatsis, WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?"

Much like over in the eastern states, they convinced Uintah county to use the polluted waste water to de-salt the road in the winter for cheap. That is, of course, until the road frikkin caught on FIRE. In WINTER.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705365224/Water-used-to-de-ice-culv
erts-contained-lots-of-petroleum-product-test-shows.html

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 6:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Texas already was in a major groundwater crisis before this, the major aquifer they use (which also lies under Kansas and some of the other ag states upgradient) is damn near depleted. Add in a a serious drought, and you've got water problems I've heard about even in UTAH.

Utah is also getting a bit of this to my east, they're fracking for oil shale, which is pretty similar in terms of actual production output, in noxious smell, in use of fracking fluid, and in "Holy whatsis, WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?"

Much like over in the eastern states, they convinced Uintah county to use the polluted waste water to de-salt the road in the winter for cheap. That is, of course, until the road frikkin caught on FIRE. In WINTER.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705365224/Water-used-to-de-ice-culv
erts-contained-lots-of-petroleum-product-test-shows.html

ogallala aquifer belongs to T Boone Pickens. It's one of three. He contaminated the other two, deliberately, as competition. He purchase the one from gov g w bush because a corner of it is under texas, and the dept of the interior said "you can't do that, we need to ask the president" and he said, "oh, given me a month to prepare my case." Of course they said "okay" and then one month later, gov bush was president bush and okayed his own deal.

Pouring the haloalkanes on the roads, they're doing that in Penn. too. The point of that is to be sure that it washes into the groundwater, because that's where roads drain to of course.

It's not a war if no one fights back.

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Saturday, July 16, 2011 6:33 PM

BYTEMITE

Pretty much. Roads catching fire is more eyecatching though. People can't see groundwater until it bubbles out of a well mixed with methane.

That was a fun experience...

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 6:26 AM

Oh, I am very well aware that fracking anywhere basically spreads the pollution everywhere, but here's the thing - as I've pointed out a time or two, concentrating your focus in order to be effective is downright necessary, look at how most successful PACs and whatnot home in on a single razor edged point and ignore everything else, versus ambiguous do-gooders who try to focus on everything, and wind up accomplishing nothing.

Ergo, if I *have* to limit my focus, it's gonna be to those who AREN'T stupidly, ignorantly, maliciously cheering it on.

Also, I've thought long and hard about enlisting the aid of my relations in the appalachian hills about this, and come to the sorrowful conclusion that the only thing worse than not convincing them...
Is actually having them try to "help" - I know these people, and you don't use a sledgehammer to fix a watch, which is about what that'd wind up as, especially with their bent towards extremely violent problem solving and downright gruesome methods of removing "problem people", mostly cause mountainfolk are so damn difficult to actually kill you *need* to go that far, and half the time it still don't take. (1)

If anyone does something stupid, violent, and counterproductive, I want it to be the Tea Party idiots who cheered this shit on, and them screamed like bitches when the consequences came back to visit them, in order to both expose their hypocrisy, and set them and the SPLC (2) at each others throats in hopes of them wrecking the living shit out of each other - remember my agenda in this is also to spark a reign-of-terror PURGE of the ignorant, koolaid drinkin haters of one side while they're weak, in preparation for ye-olde sneak attack backstab on the "for-your-own-good" koolaid drinkers of the other...
And ain't it better to have the bad elements slaughter each other out where the collateral damage is minimized ?

(1) Still laughing over the gas station encounter - "not enough gun", meh heh heh.

(2) Cause you know how the SPLC shovels that "threat of domestic terrorism" against anything and everything remotely conservative, all the while planting provacateurs and helping the Feds *create* the very threat they claim to be acting against - sure, there's racism and hate within the conservative movement, but indirectly SUPPORTING it in order to have an excuse to exist is bullshit, and the SPLC is every bit as dangerous and crazy as fuckwits like William Krar, not to mention the support risks enabling them, like what happened with Ramzi and the bomb at WTC-1993, right ?

Were I to engage my relatives in this, the first bloody thing they'd *DO* is dynamite the damn fissures trying to blow up or release the gas so that the frackers have no reason to be there, which discounts that they have n alternate agenda and risks creating another friggin Centralia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Pennsylvania
http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

-Frem
PS. Btw - if you ever find yourself at the register in a store where they're demanding your zip-code under the threat of refusal to ring up your purchases, IMHO a form of fuckin info extortion...
17921 is the zipcode for Centralia - the only one in history revoked by the US Postal service, and some of the tracking software in use (particularly by K-mart) can be wonderfully jammed up this way.
Since they're lying/extorting - why tell em the truth ?
Or you can do what I do, lean forward right into their personal space and get all creepy on em while demanding THEIR address - and then ask em how they like it!

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 9:01 AM

I just used to give them Radio City Music Hall, or sometimes Torrence High. The don't pay any attention, you could probably just pencil in 1600 Penn. Ave.

I remember Centralia well. At first there was decades of denial, and then come kid fell into a a pit of burning hell, and was rescued by a 5 year old, and then they evacuated everyone.

For a while the exit was still open... My mom stopped once. I've heard that's a bad idea ;)

Have you ever seen Silent Hill?

Oh, the things you could do if you had one of these companies to play with, to play "bad proponent."

There goes the neighborhood

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 11:20 AM

FYI - Wiki says 17927 is Centrailia's revoked ZIP code. 17921 is Ashland (ironically named, given the area and history...)

I'll confirm with USPS on which it is, just because those sales people annoy me with that garbage.

ETA: Just confirmed that 17927 is the one that no longer exists.

http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/zcl_3_results.jsp

17921 brings up Centralia and Ashland, PA on the USPS website's ZIP finder.

I'm going to remember that, and use it. :)

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 2:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
FYI - Wiki says 17927 is Centrailia's revoked ZIP code.

You might have happened to notice while you were there that the town has one billion in assets, $97 in spending and 10 residents.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 3:59 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
FYI - Wiki says 17927 is Centrailia's revoked ZIP code.

You might have happened to notice while you were there that the town has one billion in assets, $97 in spending and 10 residents.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

Yup, and a lot of people wondering if the eminent domain land-grab had anything to do with that rich coal deposit that's buried beneath the town.

Hey, maybe they've got a master plan to put the fire out by flooding it with fracking fluids... It really wouldn't surprise me at this point.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 6:23 PM

There missing out on the tourist attraction angle.

True, a billion dollars is a lot of money, but hey (I wonder if they've tried water, ya know, on the fire?)

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Sunday, July 17, 2011 7:40 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I think we've all found something we agree about. Even the pesky Raptor hasn't come in and disagreed with us all.

I tend to agree with DT that if one area gets totaled then everyone suffers, not just the mean bad people who supported it. So its better for none of it to happen, even though Frem likes revenge, the cost for his amusement would be too high.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, July 18, 2011 8:20 AM

Oh no, they wanna set up a UCG plant, you see.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification

A friend of mine is writing a post-apocalyptic novel in which a community of semi-nihilist Anarchists, who play a minor role as both potential antagonists and allies, have rolled into the area and taken it over, using that very process to operate a power and distillation plant which is the center of their society and economics - so I know a bit more about this than most folk.

We just recently had a discussion about how back in the 1800s the process of coal gasification was used to fill balloons, which in the story the Centralians would be using as observation platforms.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, July 18, 2011 12:19 PM